Communicating with your customers

Garden Centres are a unique retail environment with a broad customer base ranging from beginners to enthusiastic amateurs and professionals. Each customer has a particular need which can vary with each visit.

In recent years customers have come to expect and even demand communication as part of customer service. When delivered in the right way, they look forward to it as part of their store experience.

Customers expect communication to be up to the minute and interactive. They see digital media such as websites, digital screens and increasingly mobile marketing, as the modern way to receive and exchange information and ideas and are happy to make purchase decisions as a direct result of communication they receive through these channels.

As Garden Centres continue to carve out a niche market in the leisure retail sector they will inspire and enthuse young urban gardeners to enter the sector for the first time. This audience is the most media literate and the most likely to respond to communication.

By using a combination of screens at the entrance, in feature areas, in restaurants, adjacent to product and at the till, digital screens can be highly effective in guiding customers around the store to areas they would not ordinarily visit. The immediacy of digital technology ensures that content can be adjusted for the time of day, for the day of the week and even for the weather to ensure as many customers as possible are prompted to make an impulse purchase or to increase their spend.

Five golden rules for the effective use of digital screens

Rule 1: Content should inform, entertain or inspire.
Rule 2: It must be relevant, now.
Rule 3: Digital communication should be integrated with sales promotion and other messaging in-store.
Rule 4: It should be measured for effect on sales.
Rule 5: It should be dynamic and interactive.